In recent years, a technique of charging water molecules in air with positive ions and/or negative ions to clean the air in a living space has been highly used. For example, in an ion generating apparatus such as an air cleaner, an ion generator that generates positive ions and negative ions is provided at a halfway of an air supply passage. The ion generating apparatus includes therein an air blower, and generated ions are released to living space by wind from the air blower.
Ions that charge water molecules in cleaning air inactivate suspended particles in the living space, kill suspended bacteria, and denature odor components. This cleans the air in the entire living space.
Generally, an air blower is screwed to a body case of an ion generating apparatus. In operation, vibration of the air blower may be transmitted to the body case to resonate and generate noise. In order to prevent the transmission of vibration, Patent Literature 1 describes that with a fan being fastened to a fan base, a peripheral edge of the fan base is held between a casing body and a vibration-insulating plate via vibration-insulating packing.
A standard ion generator applies a drive voltage of high voltage AC between a needle electrode and an opposed electrode, or between a discharge electrode and an induction electrode to generate corona discharge, thus generating positive ions and negative ions.
If the ion generator is operated for a long period, spatter evaporation caused by corona discharge wears a discharge electrode. Also, foreign matters such as chemical substances or dust cumulatively adhere to the discharge electrode. In such a case, discharge becomes unstable, inevitably reducing the number of generated ions.
The ion generating apparatus described in Patent Document 2 detects whether ions are being generated or not, and notifies a user of the need to maintain the ion generator when it is detected that no ions are being generated. The ion generating apparatus includes an ion detector for detecting whether ions are being generated or not. The ion detector is provided together with the ion generator so as to face an air supply passage, the ion generator is placed on an upstream side in an air blowing direction, and the ion detector is placed on a downstream side.